Running head: POLITICAL GROUP’S MANIPULATION OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC 1

Political Groups and the Manipulation of the General Public

Grace A. Garbaty

South Lyon High School

December 20, 2023

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Abstract

It is relatively easy to manipulate the general population into supporting the self-interests of

politicians and larger political groups. Since the 2020 presidential election in the U.S., I have

been concerned with how uninformed the voters of the U.S. are when it comes to political

decisions that directly impact their everyday lives. Politics were once clear-cut with honest and

hard-working candidates. Now, elections have become a game of politicians mudslinging

opponents to make themselves seem more appealing without truly being the better candidate.

While conducting my research, I chose to narrow my focus on how public opinion is influenced

by common political tactics and the effects of the news on the public. Although family traditions

tend to be a source of bias when it comes to voting tendencies, this form of control arguably

comes from the politicians themselves who persuaded senior family members to align with the

politician’s ideology. The results of my paper revealed how voters tend to have a positive bias

towards female candidates. I also discovered that voters have a difficult time distinguishing

between lies and truths of political candidates. Later in my research, I came across instances of

President JFK, Nixon and large media outlets lying for their own political gain. Thus, my

research is devoted to a thorough investigation of the fact that, while the body of voters believe

they are making decisions based on their own findings, they are led to make these choices based

on other large political groups and politicians.

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Polarization Through the Years

Political polarization in the U.S. is brought up almost every single day by the media or

political figures: In other words, this topic is nothing new. Before the start of the Revolutionary

War in the colonies of Britain, the colonists were split between the side of creating their free

nation, and the side of submitting to King George’s oppressive rule: Neither of the two groups

were willing to hear the other party out. This rift between the colonists is not much different

from the currently dominating Republican and Democratic parties of the U.S. and the resistance

to change personal ideals. What is more fascinating is how these political parties, leading figures,

and followers of those parties continuously refuse to change their ideals for the good of the

public. Common sense seems to indicate that those leading would have the best interest of the

people at heart. This would explain the refusal to change; However, is this true? As it turns out, it

is relatively easy for political groups or politicians to manipulate the general population into

supporting the self-interest of said political groups.

Voters Are Not Good at Detecting Lies

Most people believe they can tell with ease when a person they are talking to is not

telling the truth; however, when asked whether or not a politician is lying or being frank, more

often than not, a person has difficulty deducing fact from fiction. Research done by Kyle Mattes,

Valeriia Popova, and Jacqueline Evans where voters were tested on their unaided perception of

whether or not a politician is lying by watching videos of speeches suggests that “the politician

was telling the truth 48.9% of the time. Our respondents’ judgments were correct 52.4% of the

time, which was better than pure chance” (2023, sect. 13, para. 1). In making this comment,

Mattes argues that people are not the most reliable when it comes to determining whether or not
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a politician is lying right to their faces. In this moment, Mattes brings light to the fact that these

people who guessed correctly half of the time when the politicians were speaking are the same

people who cast their vote for those who they think are telling the truth. Of course, these results

don’t speak for the entirety of the voting population, but this does drive a deep concern for a

large majority who believe they have a grasp on what is being said to them.

As anticipated, there is a logical reason for the low correctly guessed percentage of

telling when a politician is lying and why a voter chooses to believe the politician more often

than not. An interesting discovery was made by Mattes who states that “female politicians are

more likely than male politicians to be perceived as telling the truth . . . female politicians are

perceived as more trustworthy” (2023, sect. 15, para. 1). Mattes’s point is that while a male

politician may be telling the truth, voters are more likely to question and second guess what the

men are saying in their speeches. On the other hand, Mattes expresses that women who are in

office “are thought unsuited for political office because they are soft, irrational, and

incompetent” (2023, sect. 15, para. 1). Therefore, women tend to have a minor advantage over

men when it comes to coming across as more trustworthy than their counterparts. Ultimately,

what is at stake here is voters’ ability to form their own opinions on political matters can be very

well swayed based on the gender of the candidate that is running for the current office. In sum,

women in power have a slight control over a voter’s vote because they are viewed as more

trustworthy.

61-Million Person Facebook Ad Experiment

When it comes to the topic of ads, most will readily agree they are one of the most

influential ploys commonly used by businesses and political figures alike. Where this agreement
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usually ends, however, is on the question of how much influence they have. While some are

convinced that advertisements have little to no effect on consumer and voter choices, others

believe that they have a great influence on the ideals and opinions of the vast majority of the

public. In the article published by John Wihbey (2012), about 61 million Facebook users were

shown an ad at the top of their pages that displayed how their friends voted in the 2012 midterm

election and where they could vote. As a direct result, “Facebook social message increased

turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and indirectly through social contagion by another

280,000 voters” (Wihbey, 2012, para. 4). Wihbey demonstrates that well-placed advertisements

can affect if a person is going to vote. Here, many social media users would disagree with this

experiment and say these very same ads do not affect them because of the ads they see constantly

daily. However, is this thought process realistic?

When a piece of information is viewed over and over, the brain experiences priming. In

the novel Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, he explains the

effects of priming, or a way to alter how a person thinks and acts after being subject to certain

words or images. One example of priming Gladwell describes is a test designed by John Bargh,

where students were primed two different ways with two very different outcomes:

The people primed to be rude eventually interrupted — on average after about five

minutes. But of the people primed to be polite, the overwhelming majority - 82 percent -

never interrupted at all, who knows how long they would have stood in the hallway with

a polite and patient smile on their face? (Gladwell, 2005, p. 55)

At this moment, Gladwell is pointing out that while the conscious mind doesn’t recognize these

hidden messages, the subconscious mind takes in this information and reacts to it. So while the

students in the study read the “rude” or “polite” words, they didn’t consciously change to
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represent those words. Instead, these students were primed and their subconscious processed

these words and changed to emulate them. Gladwell would agree with Wihbey’s idea that

advertisements, most notably political ads, can change how a person thinks or acts towards a

political group or figure. Gladwell would also argue that Facebook ads are another form of

priming. John Bargh’s experiment, directly and indirectly, changed how many people showed up

to vote in the 2012 midterm elections, even though these people did not know they were being

manipulated to vote in the first place when they otherwise would not cast their opinion.

Lies That Took Office

There are a plethora of political leaders who have not told the entire truth about what is

reality. In the short run, these politicians have gained high positions in the government with little

opposition against them. In the long run, their lies get brought into the light and their positions

are stripped from them. A perfect example of this is former President Nixon. When people hear

of Nixon, they tend to think about the Watergate scandal. Nixon tried to cover up the break-in at

the Watergate office complex where he tried to get recordings of the democratic conversations.

Daniel Bush, PBS NewsHour’s senior political reporter, says “Nixon, who was running for

reelection that year, announced that the White House had nothing to do with the incident. Nixon

won, but his cover-up didn’t last long” (2015, sect. 4, para. 2). Lying is one of the major tactics

political leaders use to achieve their goals. Nixon was able to successfully change public opinion

of himself by simply lying. Common knowledge would suggest that the voters would deduce that

Nixon had covered up what happened during Watergate. Nixon instead proves that politicians are

able and willing to lie to get what they want in the end. People knew what he had done, yet they

still voted for him because he had manipulated the voter’s perception of the truth.
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As previously mentioned, lying is a powerful tactic politicians use to gain higher

positions of power and keep those positions. A lesser-known instance of this happening was in

the lead-up to the 1960 election. John. F. Kennedy was in a close race with Nixon and only 17

days left before the voting polls opened. Kennedy needed a way to pull ahead of his opponent.

He claimed that the Russians were pulling ahead in the number of nuclear missiles compared to

the United States. This talking point for Kennedy ended up being an effective way to gain votes

and win the 1960 election. As new evidence has since surfaced, this supposed missile gap

between the United States and Russia never existed (Bush, 2015). What Daniel Bush means is

Kennedy manipulated the voting population to vote for his campaign by implying that the United

States was behind the Russians in the nuclear arms race. The fact that Kennedy lied for the

duration of those 17 days is important because Nixon could have won the election instead of

Kennedy because of the small difference in votes as seen in Figure 1. Admittedly, the number of

people who voted for Kennedy due to the claims of the missile gap is hard to determine, but the

fact of the matter is this political gamble was used at a critical point in the election when

numbers were virtually the same. Therefore, Kennedy’s ploy to lie about nuclear missile

numbers directly impacted the outcome of political ratings with the voters in that election,

allowing him to win by a small, yet noticeable margin.

News Changing the Viewership

In the discussions about the news, one controversial issue has been whether or not the

media affects viewership voting preferences. Many people, especially older people, rely on their

preferred news outlet as their primary source of information on the current events in the world. It
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is often said that these outlets have a strong identification with right or left views in politics. As a

result, “fake news” is spread. According to “Research Guides: “Fake News”, this idea of “fake

news” refers to stories that are not factual with no way to verify the story (2023). In making this

comment, the argument that the media can release disinformation to the public is made. With the

reporting of these fake stories, reality is distorted to fit the agenda of the media and its respective

political group. Esentially, the information that is released is controlled by the media and what

they see fit to release to the viewers.

As previously stated above, the media has the capability to distort a viewers perception of

the truth. Far leaning left and right television watchers would probably disput this claim and

instead stand by the notion that news sources are factual and their opinions are their own. This

way of thinking is validated by Chrysalis Wright in the article “How Fake News Affects U.S.

Elections”, by Jenna Lee, a former anchor on Fox News. Wright states, “we tend to think that

our opinions, attitudes and beliefs are our own” (2020, para. 3). Wright backtracks later,
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however, and argues that “fake news absolutely influences our attitudes, our beliefs, and we also

know that can influence our actual behavior” (2020, para. 3). In other words, the impact the

media has on the viewers is greater than initially thought. When a population thinks the same

way as another source or politician, that person is more suscepitble to having their views change

to reflect the voices they listen to. Both “Research Guides: “Fake News”, and Chrysalis would

agree that the use of the media is arguable one of the easiest way to exploit a population because

large numbers of people can be reached at the same time.

A Path Forward

The general population can be led to believe and support political groups and the

self-interest of these groups through different tactics. The question now is how can the effects of

these schemes be controlled and minimized. Although society generally dislikes this idea, doing

personal research and fact-checking are considered some of the most effective ways to make

informed and rational decisions. Information is now more than ever readily available to most, if

not all, of the public at the click of a few buttons. In addition to this, we must also reform and

acknowledge the biases that society has built around our perceptions of gender and affiliations

with political groups. As we have seen with assumptions on gender, this has the power to

influence and change public opinion to favor a candidate because they are the preferred sex.

Thus, it is essential to alter the implicit biases that are the basis of most voter choices. Ultimately,

the undertaking of reducing the control political groups and leaders have on the voters’ choices is

challenging and demanding; it requires a great deal of commitment to resist strategies that have

been used by politicians for our entire lives. Nevertheless, if we desire to create a strong and

stable nation, establishing self-dependence away from others is a necessity for the future.
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References

Bush, D. (2015). The history of lies on the campaign trail. PBS. Retrieved from

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/the-history-of-lies-on-the-campaign-trail

Gladwell, M. (2019). Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Back Bay Books/Little,

Brown & Company.

Lee, J. M. (2020, October 26). How Fake News Affects U.S. Elections. University of Central

Florida. Retrieved from https://www.ucf.edu/news/how-fake-news-affects-u-s-elections/

Mansbridge, J. (1990). Self-Interest in Political Life on JSTOR. Political Theory, 132. Retrieved

From https://www.jstor.org/stable/191482

Mattes, K., Popova, V., & Evans, J. R. (2023). “Deception Detection in Politics: Can Voters Tell

When Politicians are Lying?” Political Behavior. Retrieved from

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09747-1

Ordabayeva, N., Fernandes, D., Han, K., & Jung, J. (2021). “How Politics Shapes Consumption

Behavior.” Impact at JMR. Retrieved from

https://www.ama.org/how-politics-shapes-consumption-behavior/

Pazzanese, C. (2020). “When We Can’t Even Agree on What is Real.” The Harvard Gazette.

Retrieved from

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/06/study-finds-political-bias-skews-perceptio

ns-of-verifiable-fact/

Research Guides: "Fake News," Lies and Propaganda: How to Sort Fact from Fiction: What is

"Fake News"? (2023). Research Guides. Retrieved from

https://guides.lib.umich.edu/fakenews
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Wihbey, J. (2012). “Facebook Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization.” The

Journalist’s Resource. Retrieved from

https://journalistsresource.org/politics-and-government/facebook-61-million-person-expe

riment-social-influence-political-mobilization/

1960 Presidential Election Returns. (n.d.). JFK Library. Retrieved from

https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/1960-presidential-election-returns